"It hasn't come completely out of the blue. There have been a few leaks of late but we weren't prepared for the entirety of the potential job losses or the short term of the plan to secure the redundancies," he said.

"There's people there today feeling very, very vulnerable, people who are coming off the night shift and panicking."

Management are understood to be aiming to cut the number of staff on the weekend shift from 180 to 70 and the redundancy plan is expected to be complete by next March.